We’re all writers here, aren’t we? The following is my new (permanent) standard cover letter for fiction and non-fiction submissions alike.

Dear Editors,

Please accept my short piece of shit, “Short Piece of Shit,” for publication in your piece of shit journalmagazinesite. I think you will find it intellectually stimulating and evocative and also notice that it smells nice in the morning fresh out of bed.

A little bit about me. I’m a faithfully unprofessional, job-holding person living in a place called Chicago, moving in fits and stops and stupors toward becoming a completely professional writer living elsewhere, or maybe hobbiton or fantasia or valhalla or milwaukee or something. My background is substantiated by charmingly costly graduate degrees in English Lit and Anthropology, perched like twin eagles atop a rather fern-like or perhaps deciduous B.A. in Misanthropy (minor in Delusions of Grandeur), none of which can I honestly say I “use” to earn the paychecks required to pay for them, though they do make me a better person. Maybe the best. One means I can write, the other that I can read—never been sure which was which. The first—last mentioned—doesn’t mean a thing.

Literarily speaking, most of my work fits within the genres of as yet unpublished short stories and brief nonfiction, and there’s a book or three in development, which is right next to nowhere, over on about 47th and Ashland. I also do a bit of blogging that’s less like blogging and more like self-publishing, because I’m too impatient to wait for anyone kind or bored enough to pick my pieces of shit from the monstrous stack of others and let them bask in the light of yes rather than condemning them to the abyss bin of the generic no. My stories, I should say (because I want to), are generally about life and love and loss, and so are my sort-of essays and prosetry, and also about dreams, they often all are, the dreams I have—the sleeping kind—of life and love and loss and death and being and prose and poetry and pretty girls I’ve never seen before. 

Aren’t dreams nice? Isn’t the sky blue sometimes or is that just how (we’ve decided) we see it? No matter, I look at the sky and think of the stars sometimes, and remember that sometimes the stars align with the cards and they say, those sayers of sooth, anyone can be anything, unless they have bad stars and cards or bad sooth. My stars and cards are alright, I think, and my sooth is probably ok, so it’d be ok and alright if you printed (and paid handsomely for) what I sent you. Sorry about the blood. Actually, I don’t even care if you pay, just put it out there, you fucks. I mean friends.

Ever so truly, warmly, lustily, steamily yours,


Here’s a pic of me writing, so you know how much I mean it:


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